Crimson Hub has previously covered the North Carolina GOP's need to clean house. First, we had Lynda Bennett and Madison Cawthorn, and then Chuck Edwards– all in a single congressional district.
We also had Mark Robinson.
Much of that occurred on Michael Whatley's watch as Chairman of the NCGOP, as did this sex offender scandal.
Now, we have a SECOND Whatley sex-offender scandal, and it's not even time for October Surprises yet.
His Senate campaign just can't seem shake its association with convicted pedophiles/pederasts, and the history makes it pretty hard to argue this is just a problem being created by low-level staff. Is Whatley telling his campaign to focus on vetting people appearing at events? If not, he sure should be.
A pastor kicked off a recent campaign stop for Michael Whatley, the Republican nominee for Senate, with a prayer that asked God to bestow “integrity and honesty” upon the event and to right wrongs “hammered down on the conservative movement.”
The prayer was hardly unusual by North Carolina political standards. What was surprising was the man who delivered it. Pastor Daimon L. King is a registered sex offender, twice sentenced to prison for convictions involving children, according to state and court records.
Some 30 years ago, King was a marching band assistant at a high school outside Raleigh when he was charged with statutory rape and indecent liberties with a 15-year-old student, The News & Observer reported at the time. King, then 31, was convicted in 1998 and served nearly five years in prison before being paroled, according to state department of corrections records.
In 2010, he pleaded guilty to having sex with an underage female relative and served close to three years in prison, state records show.
King is required under North Carolina law to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Whatley's campaign says it didn't organize the event and didn't invite King — the local Craven County GOP did.
That may be true. But again: Someone is not doing the vetting here, and that raises big questions– especially given the prior history– about what leadership is occurring from the top (Whatley) right on down with regard to these issues.
Again, this is the second time this cycle Whatley has had to explain away a convicted sex offender showing up at the center of his political operation. From Rob Crilly at the Washington Examiner earlier this year:
In 1999, West was a police officer in a small town near the Outer Banks when he was arrested and charged with the statutory rape of three girls — two were aged 14 and one was 16. He eventually took a deal, pleading guilty to a string of lesser charges of “taking indecent liberties with a child.” After six years in prison, his name went on to the state’s sex-offender register, where it stayed until 2018.
Democrats have already sunk more than $2.3 million into ads built around a photo of Whatley and West together, and Whatley still hasn't publicly answered basic questions about how long he knew about West's record.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Whatley is trailing Roy Cooper in every public poll of the race, some by double digits.
Whatley wants to run as the tough-on-crime alternative to Cooper. That's already tough because of Whatley's own criminal record and refusal to show up for court dates:
But a review of public court records shows the former Republican National Committee Chairman repeatedly failed to appear in court for traffic cases, and in 2015, two orders for his arrest were issued as a result.
Then, there's the issue of Whatley's own soft-on-crime record with regard to COVID prisoner releases.
Now, we seem to have a doubling down on the sex offender problem.
There's still an argument to be made that all in, given where Roy Cooper is philosophically– i.e., not a Joe Manchin (legitimately conservative Democrat) but more a Doug Jones (Southern but quite liberal)– Whatley remains the better candidate for North Carolina conservatives to support.
But this is becoming a question of mere centimeters, not even inches, of difference between the candidates. And it's easy to imagine that if elected, these sorts of scandals don't stop, and become an ongoing problem for the national GOP.
It's beyond time for a real, serious clean up of the NCGOP. If Whatley loses, as is widely expected, it should start the day after the 2026 midterm, no ifs-ands-or-buts.
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